Over 60 Deliverable 1 documents received for the 2016 Outback Challange

The deadline has now passed for submitting Deliverable 1 documents to the 2016 UAV Challenge Medical Express. We received 64 D1 documents from teams from all over the world. The Technical Committee will now get to work reading through the documents and assessing teams for the Go/No-Go decision. This process is likely to take 2-3 weeks.

A fair few less than last time. I'd say that's because a lot of teams would have capitulated at the range and velocity requirements to get there, land VTOL/STOL, and doing up to 60km in under an hour. It's no small feat. That's why it's more of an airframe challenge I suppose.

@ Jason

There are no points for autonomously finding a clearing or Joe in the landing area. The points are for autonomous landing-takeoff, landing proximity to Joe, and Joe location accuracy of which both can be determined manually without penalty, provided the aircraft lands/takeoff automatically.

@Jason - I'm the project manager for one of the competing teams (though I'm handing over to someone else / leaving soon); the rules don't actually require you to autonomously find a clear landing area, and so my team will be assessing potential landing zones via relayed imagery.

What must be autonomous is the flying and the landing / takeoff maneuvers at the remote landing site. We (like several or many other teams apparently) are going to achieve the latter simply by utilising a VTOL hybrid fixed wing / quadcopter design.

To minimise weight on our VTOL, we're utilising a support aircraft (a modified Mugin) which will act as a communications relay and imaging platform.